The Middle East

France's Muslims

Gay Paris

THE French are fairly relaxed when it comes to family matters and private choices. François Hollande, the Socialist president, is not married to Valérie Trierweiler, the "first girlfriend", nor was he to Ségolène Royal, the previous woman in his life and mother of their four children. His predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, divorced his second wife while in office, and married a third, Carla Bruni, without any fuss. The current mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, is openly gay.

The past few weeks, however, have seen an unusually vigorous debate, after Mr Hollande’s government introduced a new law that will allow gay couples to marry and adopt children. Tens of thousands of Catholic traditionalists took to the streets to demonstrate. The archbishop of Lyon suggested that the law would open the way to polygamy and incest. The French Council of the Muslim Faith denounced the plan, arguing that gay marriage goes against "all Muslim jurisprudence".

Many French Catholics, who wear their religion lightly, are as uncomfortable with the ultra-traditionalists' stance as younger French Muslims are with those of their official representatives. Just how far apart those views can be was apparent when a young Muslim scholar, Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed (pictured), decided last week to open a gay Muslim prayer room on the outskirts of Paris. Mr Zahed, who married his partner in South Africa, where gay marriage is already legal, said that gay French Muslims feel uncomfortable in French mosques but have nowhere else to go.

France's "first gay mosque"—in reality, a small room in a private building—was, needless to say, too much for France's conservative Muslim leaders. "This place can in no way be called a mosque," retorted Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Grande Mosquée de Paris. He said that all the faithful, whatever their private lives, were welcome in France's mosques. "We are in a free country," he added, "but these practices are formally rejected by Islam and in total contradiction with the word of the Koran". France's Muslim minority, estimated to be some 5m-6m-strong and Europe's biggest, is diverse, but its mosques tend to be highly traditional.

The clash between progressives and traditionalists over gay marriage is unlikely to be settled even after the new law is passed. Many French mayors, who preside over marriage ceremonies in secular France, are themselves uncomfortable about the change. Having introduced the new law, Mr Hollande then added to the confusion by declaring in a speech to French mayors that they should "follow [their] conscience" in applying it.

Well, luckily,your antiquated views on what you see as "normal" will be gone in 30 years. This man is helping break the chains that religion put on us to somehow keep us "normal".
I am happy to see this development and laud the French Republic for this.

Honestly, gay Muslims aren't going to feel any more comfortable with their faith simply because they now have more floor space in which to 'be themselves.' They cannot be themselves. They are inherently contradictory, and they know it. A gay mosque is a sympom of a huge problem, not a resolution to it.

Gay Muslims need more social, cultural, and - above all - more political space within the larger Muslim world, not just a pink prayer room. But how can such space be generated when Islam expressly forbids homosexuality? Two possible futures beckon: the nature of Islam or at least the dominant interpretation of Islam must change, radically and decisively, to become accepting of civil liberties; alternatively, a state of disharmony must remain between those who follow official doctrine and those women, gays, agnostics, inquiring adolescents, BLT sandwich-eaters...basically anyone who wants a bit more out of life than answering the call to prayer five times dayly.

its not about hating, but more in the fact that muslims people don't believe in "gay" people in general and like stated before if you are gay you are not really a muslim, hence why do you need to make a mosque when your not even following the religion itself?

If the mistake, was intentional, then this shows the ignorance of the paper and its bias. Although a great article, it certainly has no reason to be in Pomegranate. It almost seems they paint all of middle east and muslim word with the same brush. The subject of the article are: France, Gay Marriage, Catholics and Muslims. Why is it in Pomegranate again?

Just let gay people marry and worship wherever they wish to. Do any of you - Catholic, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist - really believe your respective religions are predicated on hate? If you do, maybe you should find a new one, or none at all. Why would you want to be members of religions that hate? Seriously.